Both sorts of billionaires—liberal and right-wing billionaires—want to protect capital at all costs, which is why someone like Bernie Sanders was equally excoriated by Democrats and Republicans. Although Trump said, “I like Bernie. You know, I kind of respect him,” I think he recognized that Sanders had a kind of authenticity that had no screen. I mean, Sanders has disappointed us in many ways, but he’s unscripted. Look at the rest of the Democrats: they can’t actually answer a simple question without having a focus group or a screen of consultants tell them the right things to say.

Hello, Catherine. Welcome to How the Light Gets In. You are a cultural theorist known for your work around class, mainly. Your next book is about trauma. Can you briefly explain this topic and why it’s important?

Well, I was really fascinated—but I should say appalled—by the way in which trauma, as an affliction and a concept, has been instrumentalized by the liberal class of professionals, especially around the very basis of their politics. Instead of just criticizing identity politics or “woke” politics, as some of my colleagues on the left have done, I thought we had to go deeper. There was something about the rise of this kind of psychologization of suffering, as well as the gentrification of pain, that struck me as critical to the post-’68 professional class elites.

One of the things that I think allowed them to eclipse the suffering of the working class—and the question of exploitation—was that they promoted, at every single level (from psychology to feminism to medicine to politics itself), the idea that trauma was something cross-class as a phenomenon.

I also came of age at a time when human rights, in the Cold War, were very dominant in politics. This whole idea of trauma, I thought hypothetically, was a way of positioning the American hegemon as the most enlightened force in the world—one that was going to help the world recover from the “trauma” of communism. The communists were seen as “apsychological”; they didn’t know how to deal with suffering.

Especially during the end of the Cold War into the 1990s, there was an idea that the Holocaust was the greatest genocide in the world, the greatest atrocity—and that it was only the “free world” that was processing it, while the recently liberated countries of the East had not looked at the trauma of the Holocaust as such.

I was really interested in how this ideology around trauma and recovery—because there is a real script—came to dominate every single aspect of the culture industry. The objectification of trauma has only accelerated since COVID and the rise of neoliberalism, where trauma becomes content. Publishers were starved for it, and it comes out everywhere.

I trace an intellectual history of trauma in American culture industries as a function of both the end of the Cold War and the war of the professional classes against the working classes. All ideas of suffering then had to go through this lens of suffering and recovery.

I was always interested in how Americans—and Anglo-Americans, since we’re all Puritans together—focus on sexual violence rather than economic violence. In the book, I argue that liberals today want to say that the greatest form of violence takes place in what I call the “hidden abode of seduction,” rather than what Marx called the “hidden abode of production.”

So, do you think it’s an element of a class war?

Yes, absolutely. I had someone do a LexisNexis search of the mention of “trauma” in American mainstream media. In 1970, the graph is low; it goes up gradually, and after 1980—the Reagan Revolution—it starts to accelerate. After 2000, it becomes an exponential increase.

You’ve given examples such as AOC’s use of her traumatic experience—live-streaming it on Instagram. There are other celebrities who constantly come out with their traumas to be more relatable. Why do you think they’re doing that?

I think it’s more than just relatability. It’s about authenticating themselves as good, enlightened people—and about burnishing their brand. For instance, Prince Harry—your prince—is obsessed with his familial trauma. While he has clearly suffered, he is also born into one of the world’s oldest monarchies and wealthiest families.

In collaboration with Oprah Winfrey—who takes up a large part of my book—they leverage celebrity and trauma to create a formula for personal branding.

It was unfortunate that AOC entered this channel. I hope younger leftists avoid it, because real political conflict requires cordoning off the personal. There is now pressure to expose oneself constantly on social media and leverage trauma for visibility. I think this is destructive both personally and politically.

We need a return to a more objective, stoic, and determined—perhaps even militant—left. The fetishization of vulnerability and confession leads us back to the most reactionary forms of bourgeois subjectivity.

Is there an idea that suffering makes you more pure or innocent?

Yes—this appears in the language of “lived experience.” It suggests that if you haven’t suffered, you don’t have the right to speak. But this is deeply anti-intellectual. Did Karl Marx work in a factory? No. Yet he was one of the greatest analysts of industrial exploitation.

He and Engels were witnesses to working-class misery. Do we say they had no right to speak? That would be absurd.

This focus on lived experience is part of a broader anti-materialism in liberal politics.

Does this come from philosophers like Levinas?

Levinas is a metaphysician of intersubjectivity. While the “other” may be unknowable, this ethical elevation of the other can mask something else. In psychoanalysis, we might call it over-identification. When you over-identify with another’s suffering, you instrumentalize it.

In trauma studies—especially those emerging from Yale—the highest ethical act became “witnessing.” But I think this reflects a kind of crypto-religiosity within liberalism.

As leftists, we should insist on secularism and maintain skepticism. Today, trauma has become a form of self-presentation. Adorno reminds us that subjectivity is always shaped by ideology—we are “marbled” with it.

To become a subject requires work. Trauma culture offers a shortcut—a kind of performance of empathy.

So how can we be both critical and genuinely intersubjective?

By resisting ready-made forms of empathy. We need skepticism and attention to the objective world.

You mentioned confession—an old form of therapy. Is this related?

Confession is deeply Christian. Augustine’s Confessions helped establish the idea of an inner life. Today, however, confession has lost its communal dimension. It becomes: “Look at me. See me.”

This produces a hall-of-mirrors effect, where others simply reflect back what we want to see. It undermines solidarity. Without recognition of shared conditions—especially class—there is no real social bond.

This leads to a broader political issue. In the U.S., critiques of identity politics from the left are often dismissed as aligning with Trump. Meanwhile, liberal institutions double down on these frameworks.

Critics like Vivek Chibber and myself face intense backlash—often reduced to insults rather than arguments.

This brings us to your work on the professional-managerial class. Who are they?

They are college-educated elites who believe their professional expertise grants them neutrality and superiority. Today, they make up about 25% of the workforce.

Thomas Piketty calls them the “Brahmin left,” opposed to the “merchant right.” But this conflict masks the deeper divide between capital and labor.

Recent data shows that 60% of Americans cannot meet basic needs. The real struggle is not between elites, but between workers and capital.

So is this an intra-class conflict?

Yes—among elites aligned with capital.

And the working class?

They are disorganized, but they know they are being exploited—in work, health, and consumption. There is both “hard” exploitation (on the right) and “soft” paternalistic exploitation (within liberal professional classes).

The resentment toward liberal elites is real, but there is no political organization that effectively represents it from the left.

Does meritocracy play a role here?

Yes. Meritocracy was originally a dystopian concept (coined by Michael Young). It creates a ruling class that believes it deserves its position. Unlike aristocrats, who felt insecure, meritocrats feel justified.

Although credentials are not formally inheritable, social and cultural capital are. This reproduces inequality.

Is meritocracy becoming technocracy?

In a sense, yes. It legitimizes elite control through “expertise,” often masking power.

Finally, where should political struggle focus?

On wages and working conditions. Even care work should be organized and valued as skilled labor. Workers should have control over the organization of work.

So how do we build a coalition against both elites and the right?

This is the central question. Left intellectuals must reassert a clear alternative—rejecting both identity-based elite politics and right-wing populism. We need a politics rooted in material conditions, worker organization, and democratic control of labor.

We are far from that transformation—but the possibility must remain open.

Thank you, Katherine. That was very interesting.

Thanks.